Chris Peterson
Havre Daily News
cpeterson@havredailynews.com
A big test was facing the Havre
Northstars American Legion baseball
team as they welcomed the defending
state champion Gallatin Valley Outlaws
to Legion Park on Thursday night in the
opening round of the 2006 Havre
Jamboree.
In probably the Northstars biggest
game of this season they handed the
ball to Chase Castloo with the hope he
could deliver them a victory and by the
end of the night Castloo delivered more
than a victory, he delivered a pitching
clinic.
“Chase really pitched well for us
tonight,” Northstars head coach Mickey
Williams said. “He had good control and
he did a really good job of executing all
of his pitches. He didn’t just try to overpower
batters like he sometimes does,
he threw his off-speed pitch and he
threw the slider as well as his fastball.
He pitched a really smart ball game and
he was very efficient with his pitches he
didn’t walk very many batters and he
just had everything going. He was on
tonight and he is tough to beat when he
throws like that.”
Castloo completely overwhelmed the
defending state champions with his vast
array of pitches, tossing a complete
game three-hit shutout to lead the
Northstars to an impressive 8-0 victory.
With Castloo on fire on the mound.
he didn’t need a whole lot of run support,
but the Northstars’ offense gave
him more than enough to secure the victory.
The Northstars struck right away in
the bottom of the first inning as leadoff
hitter Sean Peterson kicked things off
with a single and later scored on a
groundout by Bryan Heath to take a 1-0
lead.
In the bottom of the second inning,
the highly touted Outlaws began to lose
their composure as they committed
three errors in the inning that eventually
led to three Northstars runs, giving
Havre a 4-0 lead and giving Castloo all
the run support he would need.
“They made some uncharacteristic
mistakes,” Williams said. “I know that
they were missing a couple of their players
but still they made some mental
errors and luckily we were able to execute
and take advantage of them.
Because a lot of times teams will make
some mistakes but if you can’t make
them pay for their mistakes then it
doesn’t really matter. So I thought that
it was big for us to be able to capitalize
on all the mistakes that they made especially
early on in the ballgame.”
The Northstars added three more
runs in the bottom of the sixth inning
for a little extra insurance in case of a
late charge by the Outlaws. The sixth
inning rally began with Peterson drawing
a leadoff walk and then stealing second
base to put himself in scoring position.
Two batters later, Heath connected
on a base hit that drove in Peterson
making the score 6-0. The Northstars
added two more runs in the inning when
Austin Small scored on a sacrifice bunt
by Tanner Donovan, and Josh Morse
singled to score Heath making it 8-0 and
putting the game out of reach for good.
Castloo earned the win for the
Northstars with is complete game
shutout while Loran Carosella got handed
the loss for the Outlaws after giving
up eight runs, five of them earned on
seven hits while walking three. He also
hit three batters and struck out four.
Small led the way at the plate for the
Northstars going 2-for-4 with a run
scored. Peterson had a good night at
the plate going 1-for-3 with a walk and
two runs scored. Anthony Wirtzberger,
John Christian, Josh Morse and
Donovan all added hits in the game.
Tyler Child, Toby Marx and Riley
Cope each had a hit for the Outlaws as
the state champions suffered a rare
shutout.
“This was a pretty big win for us,”
Williams said. “They are a good team
even though they are missing a few guys
and to go out and beat them they way
we did just shows that we can compete
with the better teams out there. I am
very pleased with the way the our guys
came out and played, they played hard
and with a lot of emotion and I think if
we can build on this win and keeping
playing like this we will be a tough team
to beat.”
The Northstars will face the Glacier
Twins tonight at 7 at Legion Park. The
Jamboree continues on Saturday with
the Northstars squaring off against
Bitterroot at 4:45 p.m., and on Sunday
when they take on Kalispell at 1:30 p.m.
